It's a good start, but you'll definitely need filters and some sort of item history - eg: with a quick JC/mining search, I can see that I can make 297g profit on cutting ametrines.. but they're a LK gem... so is it likely to sell? probably not...

Building up a history of item listings on realms will be very handy, because then you could sort by popularity. Then you know you can get maximum profits on something you know will sell.

That'll make it a bit more complicated, but it'll make it exceptionally useful.

Good point - I was thinking of adding an indicator next to each item that states what the average price of the item is in your realm, as well as the global average. Hopefully that would help with that sort of situation.

This is an awesome website, but I ran into the same problem. My server is pretty dead (Staghelm), so there's lots of items that someone inexplicably put up for a ridiculous price. Somehow I don't think I'm going to make an 18k profit on a flying carpet...

It really is an awesome website though, I'm definitely going to use it! Thanks!

Thank you! I definitely get what you mean. There's a lot of items that will not be able to make the profit indicated. When I look at the list, I tend to think of the items as profit making "suggestions" - you still need to have that in-game knowledge to really know if it's really worth making and selling the item :)

I'm on a high pop realm (Proudmoore) and while there's some twinks around, the market is very heavily at the L90 zone. If I have 3 hours to farm, process and list goods, I'm not going to chase items that might sell, when I could just get the extra profit with selling a few extra L90 gems. :)

Thanks for the great feedback! I definitely had this in mind when I was building the site, and I think I will add some feature to cover this problem.

The only difficulty though, is that the Blizzard API doesn't specify what happened to each item that was listed in the auction house. So, when a specific auction gets removed from the database, that either means that it expired, was removed, or was sold. I would love to have something that said "x units were sold in the last week", but with this data I would only be able to do something like "x units were in the auction house last week". Like you mentioned though, it would definitely help!

Well, even having number of X item listed in the past day/week/month would help - if a lot are listed, you could probably assume there's at least some market for the item, unless it's something that's created when levelling a profession.. If it's sold or not would be good, but as you say, you're limited with the data you get.

This is what I was going to mention. If there was some way to cut out pre-MoP stuff, this would be sweet. I had a look at Inscription and I was getting items like Runescrolls of Fortitude and Origami Rocks

Thanks, I appreciate the offer. Right now, the main reason why EU isn't up is because I'm trying to cut the delay time of the auctions that are on the site. If you pick a realm at random, you'll see that the auctions are 60-120 minutes behind. This is happening because I have to pull 244 separate realms (multiply that x2 for Alliance/Horde) worth of auction data from Blizzard constantly. Also, i don't think it's possible to know WHEN Blizzard is updating each realm, so I have to keep querying until I get new auctions.

If I were to add the EU realms, I'm afraid it would further increase the lag of the auctions for everyone. I'm trying to figure out a way to do this smoothly, both so the server is not bogged down, and so that I do not flood Blizzard with requests. Like I said in another post, I'm relatively new to programming, so this is a learning process for me.

With that info, if someone would be able to help, it would be most welcome :)

If I remember correctly, the Blizzard api updates once an hour for auction data. So once you successfully pull a realm's data (check against total entries in the list. If the number is different, it's different data), the next time you should attempt to get it again is 60 minutes later (maybe plus a few extra minutes to alleviate getting the same data twice).

That should help relieve the amount of requests you need to make.

If you're feeling especially saucy you can check your new data against the old and see what entries are different (remaining time, price deviation, etc) or missing and it can help you establish a price history and guesstimate of what's been sold. This is essentially how Undermine calculates what's been sold recently, but it can be inaccurate for markets that see a lot of cancel/relist activity, namely glyphs.

You pull data at 11:00 and it is new data (number of total entries in the list is different from what's in your database). You store the data and tell your script to retrieve again in 60 minutes.

You pull data at 12:00 but Blizzard hasn't updated yet. The data you just got should be identical to what's already in your database. You ignore it, and tell your API script to retrieve the data again in 5 minutes (adjust this number to find something that is pretty reliable).

Blizzard updates at 12:01. The data you get at 12:05 will now be different from what's in your database, and you can store it. Now you tell your script to retrieve again in 60 minutes.

TBH, I'd use your site more to find new markets than look up last minute deals (so I wouldn't mind lag much).

Do you have to pull server data one by one? A solution to that problem though would be splitting your update process into threads so you can split the load among different processes, thought that might cause a small flood, dunno what the limitations of the system are.

Yes, one by one :/ I've actually already split the load, but it's still lagging behind. I'm curious to see if the server would be able to handle more splits but I don't want to risk crashing it at the moment!

making 488 simultaneous requests is pretty much nothing (the guy next to me is doing load balance tests, he's making 30k requests in 5 minutes trying to crash a server), I'd wager you could have threads pulling data for relms, each thread fetches data, waits 10 minutes fetches again. Maybe you got one of those shared hostings and you don't have access to enough CPU to do this. Again, dunno your limitations, but that would be the approach I'd use if I were to face that challange :)

TSM is a really powerful and easy tool. It seems complicated at first but is relatively easy. There are some good youtube video which explains it pretty well.

Comebine TSM with Auctioneer and you're pretty much the god of auctions. Auctioneer can help you find deals similar to this website whether it's disenchant or reselling. It's just that it takes time to get a good database, alot of filter and scans before it's usable to its full extent.

The reason I have Mining up is because I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) it is the only gathering profession that you actually craft things with. So for example, you can use ores to make bars.

That way, if you select a crafting profession, let's say Blacksmithing, along with Mining, it'll show the ores in the reagent list instead of the bars IF the cost of the ores is cheaper than the bars in your realm's AH.

I haven't had a herbalist/skinner in a long time, but from what I remember, there's no crafting spells in those professions. If there is one, let me know and I'll add it!

Those two spells should be under Leatherworking though, not Skinning, right?

I think this should be active on the site at the moment. I know that some realms did not have enough Sha-Touched Leather in the AH, so in those cases, the conversion from Sha Touched > Exotic will not show on the site.

Great work so far! Tough, i noticed how prices calculate at the lowest posted item...
For example , if i need 80 cobalt bars to make an item, your site would calculate it as 80xthe lowest price, and not the price that we would actually have to pay...

That's a good point - thank you. I think this is an important issue which can completely break the site if someone posts just ONE item at a very low price (like the example you gave).

I am working on a different approach where the site uses an average of the 10% cheapest items currently listed (hope that makes sense - sorry I'm kind of tired!), instead of just straight up using the lowest price.

It'd be a bit more work, but I'd compute the standard deviation and then report the average of that range. That'll allow you to filter out the really lows and really highs that could otherwise screw over your dataset.

It's the price of what is at the AH when I last retrieved the data from Blizzard (typically at 1-2 hour intervals - but I'm hoping to improve this soon!). The price listed will be the lowest price of the item on the AH.

The average price of each item is definitely on the to-do list for the site as well.

Unfortunately, the data sometimes can be lagged since I am dependent on when Blizzard updates their auction data. So let's say if I retrieved the data 30 minutes ago, and for that one moment there was a Sha Crystal up for 111g, then that will be the price that the website shows.

Of course, once someone buys out that Sha Crystal, it will no longer be on the AH, but will show on the site :( This is an unfortunate side-effect, but I don't think there's any way of fixing it.

If you find a lot of inconsistencies, please let me know! Could also be a bug.

It is up. I can't say that it will help a dying realm like mine though.

This is an awesome site with a great idea.

Question... Do you think this would be a mobile-worthy website? Because I really think so. Combined with the Mobile Auction House people could easily play the Auction House without having to log in with the client.

Hello, checked out the website; it has great potential.
I only checked out the inscription section, because that is the only profession I have. I found that there could definitely be some improvements.
If you look at the recipe for Inscribed Red Fan for example, you will see your website states you need
6x Light Parchment(not needed)
6x Misty Pigment(equivalent to the 3 starlight inks, so this is accurate)
1x Spirit of Harmony (not needed)
150x Rain Poppy (Not needed, not even in ink form)
The real recipe is an Inscribed Fan, 5x Scroll of Wisdom, and 3x Starlight ink.

Now for the features that I'd like to see as a viewer of the website.
I would definitely like to see the items categorized into sections such as the Glyphs (even a sub-category for each class would be nice), Weapons, Inks, and Cards, etc.
I'd also like to see a filter for the expansions if you don't want items from WoTLK or BC popping up. And finally, for inks for example, having the costs for the pigment and the ink so we could see which to buy.

Thank you, I really love the idea for the website, and I hope this information helps you out! As a future web developer, best of luck, and I hope to see your website skyrocket in popularity :)

Regarding what you said about inscription, the website shows the cheapest combination of materials that you can buy to arrive at the final item. So the 6x Light Parchment that you mentioned are indeed needed: 5 of them you use for 5x Scroll of Wisdom, and the other for the 1x (plain )Inscribed fan. The 1x Spirit of Harmony and 150x Rain poppy are also for the materials of the (plain) Inscribed Fan. In other words, it's showing the materials needed to make the materials to craft the final item (inception-style). I hope that makes sense!

I definitely agree with you on the second part, I will add as many filters as possible - hopefully these should be coming soon! As for the pigment/ink cost, the website also automatically picks the cheapest material for you to buy (if both are available in the AH).

Thanks for the wishes! Your info will definitely help. I am also a starting web developer - best of luck to you as well!

Probably has something to do with the other combines that go into it. You do need 5x parchments for 5x scrolls(part of the inscribed fan) as well as a spirit for the inscribed fan. Same goes for the poppy, I'd wager; that much herbs should be more than enough on average to supply enough ink to do the whole item from the ground up.

Also I forgot to mention but it looks that some of your guys have seen it. For the launch of the site I'll be doing a drawing for a 60-day game time card if you like the Facebook page, as well as one for a 30-day game time card if you join the mailing list :)

The mailing list sends you daily updates of the top profit makers on your realm (based on your professions of course!)

This is very useful. Although you might want to add an option for faction as well. I noticed Magic Lamp was up there as a highly profitable item, but that's only because it's only available to Alliance enchanters and Illidan is about 99% Horde. So it of course sells for nearly triple what the horde variation does.

I suppose it wouldn't matter if you bought all the cheap materials Horde side, sold them to an Alliance alt over NAH, made the pet and then sold them back to your Horde character of NAH. But, faction options might be nice.

Nah, you can see just fine :) It's currently in a beta stage using just the US realms. I am planning to (hopefully) have EU up by next weekend! I would love to have EU up right now but I'm running into delay issues when updating the auction data.

it's a nice idea, but the problem you have is that you show only the current selling price of an item...so I could really jack with your users by posting stuff that doesn't sell, at an outrageous price, and then sell the mats higher than normal, hoping to sucker in people who are too dumb to understand.

Agree with you there. The way I see it, the site gives you suggestions - but you definitely still need some in-game knowledge to be able to know which items will be profitable and actually sell at the price. One of the features that I'd like to add in the future is the average price for each item, so people will not be easily deceived like you mentioned.

Go look at gw2spidy.com and see how they handle something similar for Guild Wars 2. His stuff is open source, so you could snag a copy and perhaps modify it. The historical info is the invaluable part. he also has an interface where you can download info using JSON.

I love this. I was just thinking last night about making a list of items I normally craft and sort them by profitability.

One concern I have. If this information is easily accessible, couldn't it have negative repercussions on the economy? What if suddenly a lot of players craft the same items? Will there be heavy price fluctuation and market instability?

Thanks! That 's an interesting question actually - I'm not sure if my site would ever have enough visitors to have such an impact on the economy like that, but if it did... then I'd be actually pretty curious to see the result!

Not sure if this was posted already or not, but there seem to be 2 gathering professions missing: skinning and herbing. Is there a reason for putting mining on there but not those two (for all I know, you just haven't gotten around to it yet). Seems like a pretty neat tool though. Keep up the good work.

I reeeeeally love the idea. A couple things I didn't see others mention though. You should be able to load in your character so that you can have it only show the recipes you can make with your personal skills. Another thought is to check out https://theunderminejournal.com/ It would be really cool if you could get real-time (or as close as possible) updates on AH prices.

Thanks for your suggestions! I'm not sure if it is possible to load the character's profession skills from the Blizzard API, but I will look into it.

I really love The Undermine Journal -as an Industrial Engineer it's like heaven to me. I'm currently working on getting the auction prices to be as close to real-time as possible. Unfortunately, Blizzard only updates their auctions every x minutes, and I have to wait for them to update it before I can retrieve again.

The recipes part is a list of EVERY recipe that the character can make in terms of the spell required to create the item. For example, my last-by-ID tailoring pattern is 138600, or Falling Blossom Hood

Remember when I said that you won't like it? Blizzards own API for recipies doesn't actually give you the mats list:

That was probably the most annoying part of making this website - the Blizzard API doesn't list the reagents! Luckily, I was able to pull them from WoWHead's XML (which is great!); however, it did not work for certain things (eg Disenchanting, Prospecting, Milling, etc...)

I will try my hand at this though, I do agree that it would be a cool feature!

Also, auction files are updated approximately hourly. You won't be able to get any higher resolution from the API, and that processing time can shift that hour wait over the course of a week. The resets should provide a decent restart point for the data, but are not perfect. Expect to query the API for the last-modified stamp for each realm at least 3 or 4 times..

I'm unsure what sets your site apart from pre-existing sites like The Undermine Journal or WoWuction which are generally better for people who are serious about making gold.

Example: If I want to make gold with Inscription I can go to your site and put in my server and Inscription and sort by profit margin. Apparently tnhe most profitable thing for me to make is an Origami Rock for 4g profit. :|

Now, that's just oddities based on cheap materials. Let's go to the first actual glyph. Glyph of Dark Succor is listed as the highest profit margin on my server. However that's all I can really see. How much it was selling for ~90 minutes ago and the mats to make it (listed in pigment, which is odd considering the shoulder inscriptions are listed by herb, so that's a bit annoying itself.)

If I go to the Undermine Journal, for example, I have everything your site provides plus how many are currently on the AH, availability and price history for the past two weeks, info for other server averages, the post activity of other players on my server so I can see if the item is heavily contested, the names of other sellers to add to my friends list to keep an eye on competition, and the approximate expiration time of my competitor's auctions.

That's just for a given item, discounting the market alerts, Undermine Journal GE addon which interfaces with the most popular auction house addon, Great Deals section, listing of Black MArket AH items (on available realms), etc.

I don't mean to be a Negative Nancy but I just don't see the point of another site if it doesn't bring anything new and useful to the table.

Edited to add: Looking around a bit more it seems your intended niche is that you can put in several professions and your site will tell you the most efficient way to go about crafting an item based on your professions. Without going too much into if that's even very useful (I hold it isn't since most professions now get their reagents from only one gathering profession and that's it, but others likely disagree) I'm wondering if it actually even works.

I checked every profession box and so if there's an efficient way to go about doing so it should certainly tell me. Unfortunately, at least from what I can tell, it's doing absolutely nothing for me based on the professions I've chosen. It's not telling me if it's cheaper to buy a Primordial Ruby or buy Ghost Iron and prospect based on odds of the prospecting combined with price of golden lotus and proc chance of my alchemist. It's Mysterious Essence as a mat for Enchant Weapon - River's Song at 18g51s a piece despite Spirit Dust only being 2g 83s, meaning I would get a better deal buying Spirit Dust and crafting it up with enchanting.

Like, I don't get what the profession checklist is even doing for me here.

I really do like The Undermine Journal as well, and like you said, it does do a lot of things that my site does not.

The idea that I had for my site was not to provide as much information as UJ, but rather, I wanted to answer the question: How can I best use my current combination of professions to make a profit? That way, if you have professions that work well together (BS/JC/Mining), the site would be able to show you where your opportunities are, and what the cheapest combination of materials would be for each item. This is what I was hoping to bring to the table.. not a site that shows your market info, but one that would create all the possible crafting "chains" for the professions you choose, and automatically pick the best one.

You mentioned that you picked only Inscription, I would ask you to try again with a combination of professions. For a single profession, I do agree with you that UJ is much better :) As you said, they go very much in depth - I was looking for something more quick and simple.

Also, you mentioned that one glyph was showing the pigment, while another was showing the herbs - this is actually on purpose. The site picks the cheapest material that is on the AH at the time (the sum of the herbs, or the pigment itself) and chooses that as the material. I hope that makes sense.

Anyway, thank you again for your feedback, and I hope you can see at least what I was trying to do with this site :)

No problem. You're actually absolutely right about the Mysterious Essence/Spirit Dust deal. When I was programming the site, I kept running into infinite loops with certain recipes where you could go back and forth from one reagent to another. This happened a lot in Enchanting and Alchemy. For example:

So what did I do to get rid of this problem? I removed all recipes that went UP. So I removed Spirit Dust > Mysterious and Mysterious > Ethereal. That fixed the problem... but not really! Because now (like you said) there are instances in which it is better to just buy the Spirit Dust and craft UP, and my site doesn't capture that at the moment.

My hope is to change this with better programming in the future, so that it WILL work both ways, up and down. Right now, though.. it kind of only works going down! This is one of the reasons why I kept it in beta - there are definitely some flaws.

Another difficulty is prospecting. There are a lot of cases in which it is difficult to predict the outcome of a prospect. For this reason, my site does not efficiently tell you how to do the "ore shuffle" YET... but maybe soon!

Again, I appreciate you pointing out the flaws with the site. Hopefully I will be able to fix them!

Just an fyi, not all of the recipes are correct. The enchant life-stealing for weapon is one of them, the actual recipe uses undeath essence and living essence in addition to the shards. The site shows just shards.